Wanna break up?

My first boyfriend broke up with me via sticky note after eight months of dating.

Wanna break up?

We're better as friends than lovers.

I had to snatch the note out of Ray’s hand; he was afraid to show it to me. We were on the couch in his parents' living room, watching 8 1/2. A few minutes earlier we had been cuddling.

A few minutes of my quiet crying and his quiet consoling later (his parents were home and we didn’t want to make things weird) I found myself in a surreal scene, eating leftover high school graduation cake that Ray’s mom brought out for us while my heart was busy folding and ripping itself into a paper snowflake.

It's a weird break-up story, but it’s fitting for our weird relationship.

When Ray asked me out, I was a freshman in college in Boston, and he was a senior at my old high school in the suburbs. We'd been close friends for about a year.

Ray was short, 5'5'' ish, dark, thick, wavy hair and big, dark eyes. Stocky. He had this heavy way of walking, kind of like a character in an old Disney cartoon, and he was always fidgeting, softly snapping his fingers or crossing his arms. He grumbled out loud to himself. His voice had a deep, nasal tone that he loathed, but I thought was cute.

He was smart and darkly funny and stubborn. He loved and consumed movies more than anybody I'd ever known. He wanted to be a director. He was a talented actor. I remembered coming home from college to see him in the lead in the fall school play. I watched him kiss a girl on stage before I’d even gotten a chance to kiss him.

We shared a lot of firsts together -- we were each other's first relationship. First real kiss -- in my garage after our first date. We stumbled our way around the other bases on the couch in my living room, stopping short of going all the way. I wasn't ready; it was important to me to wait until it felt right.

We mostly communicated via AIM while I was at school. Before dating, we used to chat about our crushes, how hurt we felt when they ignored us. We probed the darker rooms of our psyches together, shared our most painful memories and secrets. While dating, we had a little less to complain about. After all, we had each other; we were supposed to be happy. We mostly traded hearts and I love yous.

In June, I sat through his long high school graduation ceremony. I posed for a picture with him afterwards. Our parents, meeting for the first time, smiled and made small talk. I was in town for the summer, and was all ready for summer romance.

I think it was maybe a week later that he handed me that note.

I cried harder than I thought I would -- definitely harder than he thought I would. I sobbed in the car as I pulled away from his house. He ran after my car. Not to catch up to me -- just to try to make me laugh.

Ray’s reasons for dumping me trickled out. He admitted he had never really loved me. He worried that if we stayed together much longer we’d have to get married. Plus, he was still obsessed with a girl from high school.

That should have been enough to end things permanently, but I was addicted to affection. We hung out again that summer. We hooked up again; I initiated it. He told me he wouldn't take me back, but it didn't matter -- I just wanted to feel wanted.

It didn't end when I went back to college for sophomore year. He went to school in a nearby city. When his roommate was out of town, I would take an hour-long T ride, an hour-long train ride, and a 15 minute bus ride to his dorm. He'd sneak me in past past his peers and we'd barricade ourselves in his warm little room all night, talking, cuddling, kissing, eating junk food.

I knew what he really wanted out of those visits. It wasn’t a secret. He explained it several different unappealing ways. A special connection we'd share forever. Practice for our next relationships. Closure. Each time I declined to go all the way, he'd physically turn away from me and ignore me. Then I'd sleep next to him in his twin bed and make the trek home the next day, feeling gross.

Over time, the visits became less frequent, and eventually stopped.

The next year, I happend to fall in love with a friend from school. A shy, sweet boy who I worked with. We made our relationship official the summer after my junior year.

Ray wasn't doing well. His own love life was stagnant. He pined after girls who avoided him. In his dark hours, he called himself hideous, unlovable, stupid for breaking up with me. He was lonely. He feared he would always be lonely. No amount of me trying to cheer him up or encourage him or console him had any effect.

For several months, Ray would jokingly, or so I thought, ask me whether or not I had gone all the way with my new boyfriend. I finally got fed up with him asking, and so I told him. Yes. It finally felt right.

I thought he would probably know that answer was coming, since he kept asking, but his reaction was unfathomable. He felt shocked and disgusted and betrayed. He sent me a long, horrible, angry Facebook message to that effect; I could barely read it, it hurt so much. And then he blocked me.

I was angry. So angry that Ray tried to make me feel ashamed for moving on.

Ray unblocked me after a while. He apologized. He asked to go back to the good old days before we dated, when we were best friends and talked all the time. Impossible. Things were too messy. Time had passed, but we were both still upset. I couldn’t stomach his complaints about his love life anymore. Our conversations became those of acquaintances -- mostly questions about work.

A couple of years went by. The messages became more infrequent. Then, he stopped messaging altogether.

It had been a year since he'd contacted me when I saw something unexpected pop up on my Facebook -- Ray is in a new relationship. I did a little stalking -- he was with a cute girl with silver hair who seemed crazy about him.

It's funny how years later, old, zombie feelings can rise up and bite you in the gut.

I thought about how close he and I once were, and how we had grown so far apart that I knew absolutely nothing about this girl.

We weren't lovers anymore, we weren't even friends anymore, and I realized that we were probably both better off for it.

I couldn’t resist saying something, so I sent him a little message of closure.

Duuuuuuude heard the news

Really happy for you

A little cliche sticky note of my own.